GWOT V - Officer Training

GWOT V - Officer Training

I can't share most of the Republic's officer training materials. I just can't.

The format, however, is very straightforward. You have a Web portal that transfers your end of module quiz to your officer records. The system assumes you don't have Internet access, so the modules load in the background whenever you do.

There's a topic. There's some text. There's pictures. You have to answer questions, usually based on the pictures. Very function based.

"A mass casualty incident is when the number of injured persons exceeds the ordinary capability of available response personnel. In California practice, a Level 1 MCI is any incident where this is true but the number of seriously injured is less than twenty-five (25). If between 25 and 50 persons are injured, it is a Level 2 MCI. Each additional fifty (50) persons adds a level. For example, if seven hundred people are injured, this is (700-50 = 650 / 50 = 13 + 2) a Level 15 (fifteen) MCI."

A picture is shown of a field of wounded. No hint of how to count them is provided; this should have been learned in several other places, including troop estimation, reconaissance and crowd control tactics.

"What level MCI is this incident?"

"Level 1. Level 2. Level 3. Level 4."

Level 4. Correct. Approximately ninety people are pictured.

"When feasible, one BLS ambulance strike team is auto-dispatched for each level of an MCI. Additional levels add additional resources. Level 2 MCIs add an ALS ambulance strike team for each additional level. Level 3 MCIs add a physician strike team for each additional three levels. Level 5 MCIs and higher add a California field hospital for each additional five levels."

"A Level 7 (seven) MCI has been declared. What assets are auto dispatched?"

"Seven BLS ambulance strike teams."

"Six ALS ambulance strike teams."

"Two physician strike teams."

"One California field hospital."

"All of the above."

All of the above is correct.

"About how many people are injured in this Level 7 MCI?"

"Seven hundred."

"Three hundred and fifty."

"Three hundred."

"Seventy."

Three hundred is correct.

###

You may be thinking that this is a piece of esoteric knowledge. That very few people need to know this because mass casualty incidents are so very few.

I wish.

I fucking wish.

GWOT IV - Range

GWOT IV - Range

The worst of my recovery was about a week after I had been rescued.

I was in a bed in a green painted room. Way, way back in the day, it had been an office. Now it was a single patient room. They'd tried putting me on ward, but I kept waking up screaming and waking other patients.

I had managed to snag my laptop from Mo. Strictly speaking, he shouldn't have. I'm not on staff here, I'd been reminded, I'm a patient, cared for here because of my old security clearances. But I was still getting E-mail.

None of it work related. Sharon was the Security Site Manager now. The SLE ... I never found out. But he was gone and his name was taboo.

The VP of HR was of course, still dead. I hoped that she'd been buried with honor on Boot HIll with so many of our other beloved and lost. But Homeland had probably rolled her into the charnel pit at the foot.

Somehow, the E-mail system had changed my address to resist.ca.gov

It seemed ... confused. But I was confused too.

Sometimes the only thing that stopped me screaming when I woke up was seeing that laptop.

Prisoners in cells don't get laptops.

There were training programs. I took them. There were questions. I answered them.

Physical therapy - twenty minutes of a harried woman in yoga sweat pants and long uncombed black hair, showing me what exercises to do to try to get some use of my right leg and left hand. Then hours of painful effort, bringing tears to my eyes, but I had to become functional. Had to get out of this bed.

Every now and again, a guard walked past in the hallway. Just to see if I was there, I guess, because I was no longer their boss. A good luck charm, I suppose.

I stopped one.

"Hey, I want to get in some range time," I said carefully.

They fled.

But an hour later, Sharon parked herself on the edge of my bed. She'd seen me naked. We hadn't screwed. But we were tight.

"I can get you on the fixed simulator. Not a problem. You can't move worth shit yet, and the kill house is fully booked up, but the doc will probably clear you for that next week.

"You are not authorized to go to the static or the pop up range. I took the liberty of adding you to the exclusion list."

I looked at her.

"Why?" I demanded.

"Suicide risk," she replied as bluntly.

"That's not why I need range time."

"As you know, we have had three suicides on our ranges. I am not interested in risking a fourth."

I thought about it for a moment.

Then I tried something I'd been thinking about ever since they'd wired me to a gurney and rolled me into a warm furnace.

Sharon froze with the barrel of the handgun pressed under her chin. It was in my bad hand, my left hand, and I had defeated her high retention holster with my right hand. Same one I'd worn for years. Same one Homeland had issued its prisoner handling troops.

"Not a suicide risk," I said at arm's length to her appalled face.

I let go of the firearm and found myself lying on the floor, bed toppled, much shouting, reaction alarms going off, and Sharon pointing her backup gun at me. Crouched in a corner of the room, in a tight ball the center of which was her firearm. As far from me as possible without fleeing the room.

"Stand down! Hands up! Palms on the wall, hands wide apart, or I swear to God I will drop you!"

The larger duty handgun - the one I had stolen - was somewhere amid the bedclothes of the toppled bed.

I put the palms of my hands on the wall as instructed. From a kneeling position as I couldn't get up without putting a hand on the ground. And that I would be shot for.

REACT - the client's armed responders - arrived in force. They supervised with their rifles from outside the room as Sharon holstered, fished around in the bedclothes, recovered her other firearm, and backed out of the room carefully.

Well, shit.

I stayed where I was.

Of all people, the physical therapist came into the room, totally ignoring all the guns.

She righted the hospital bed. Stretched out the sheet. Piled the blanket loosely at the foot.

Closed the door in the face of the REACT team, which didn't know what to do.

"Get up, get back in bed. How bad did you fuck up the hand?"

I did. She took it in hers and looked at it.

"Oh yeah," she said. "Leave them in plain sight, just so the boys with toys don't get frosty. Let me get you an ice pack."

She opened the door to pointed guns, stared them down, got an ice pack, and returned with it and a small hand towel.

REACT eventually wandered off. A pair of guards replaced them. The former office door was replaced that afternoon with a frosted window door. From the executive wing.

The same one I'd seen the VP of HR murdered in. I'd had a boot stepping on my face at the time.

###

The doctor and Sharon brought in chairs. They needed to have a long talk with me.

In simple justice, my hands were secured to the arms of the hospital bed with soft restraints for their visit.

I asked where Betty was. This was more her thing.

"She's Collections now."

Resistance Intelligence.

"But if you're wondering who is going to make this decision ..."

A third person walked in. Short. Stout. Loud. Still tattooed.

She now wore uniform and rank markings.

Colonel.

Colonel Janine.

Much now became clear, about how Site had gone over to the Resistance so very swiftly.

"So, Echo 18, what were you thinking when you took Sharon's firearm?"

I answered honestly.

"I wanted to know if I could do it."

Sharon shrugged. "You did do it. I was very shocked. I didn't think I'd done anything to piss you off. But you've killed plenty of people who didn't piss you off."

"I have no beef with you. I don't want my old job back."

"But you wanted to know if you could take my gun."

The three of them looked at each other.

"I spent a lot of time in a gurney, which is kind of like a hospital bed. I couldn't get a hand free. But I spent a lot of time wondering what would have happened if I could. Now I know. Thank you. Sorry for the stress."

Sharon started laughing.

"Shit. Still teaching from a hospital bed. I learned my lesson. High retention is an attitude, not a piece of gear." She paused. "We're cool. Don't do that again or I will end you. Regretfully but for certain. Copy?"

"Copy."

"We don't need you here. California needs you, very badly. But not if you're suicidal."

"Fuck that," I said shortly.

"Which part?"

"California doesn't need a half-crippled former security manager for jack shit."

The bitterness in my voice could have been bottled as a flavor.

"Captain."

I looked around then realized Janine was talking to me.

"All three of us know you held this place together with baling wire and a C-clamp through two years of the worst the Firecracker and Homeland could throw at us. Then you survived several _months_ of interrogation. You could be blind in a wheelchair and there'd still be a lot you could do. Sharon will be the first to admit that you left big boots behind for her to fill. Every life saved in this infirmary is because you had the brains and the balls to make Site create it and maintain it. Even shanghaied the surgeon to run it."

Vet surgeon, at first. She learned people fast.

"That's not just management. That's vision. You have no idea how badly California needs that right now. Put up your hand."

She leaned forward and untied both hands.

I had to choose.

I put up the left one. The ruined one.

"Repeat after me. Of my own free will, without deception or purpose of evasion, I swear..."

Sweat soaked through my back to the sheets as I finished the oath.

"Now we're on the right track, Captain. Your orders are to become fit for duty as soon as possible, study the materials on your E-mail, and get ready to take over and run something else. Don't know what yet, but we would be fools to waste an experienced manager.

"Sharon, you will issue him a duty handgun. Charge it to the Resistance. And find him a set of tabs."

Janine walked out of the room.

Sharon and the doctor looked helplessly at each other.

"See you at the range," Sharon muttered, and left.

The doctor paused. "Show me your hand." A longer pause. "Shit."

"The tendon?" I hazarded.

A hard nod. "Do your best. You'll never get full use of it back."

I found that I already knew that.

Then I realized what the doctor was waiting for.

I was sworn in now.

I saluted. She returned it, and left.

Son of a bitch.

###

I woke between nightmares briefly.

Just long enough to weep, soundlessly.

Why can't I just die already?

Because people still need me.

Goddamn it.

I mustered up my courage to do the hardest thing I do. At least two to three times a night.

I tried to go to sleep.

GWOT V - Blood

GWOT V - Blood

"Blood is the working fluid of the soldier." - Viktor Suvorov (psuedonym)

The park ranger truck pulled up to the gate. Hard eyes, harder than the machine guns, verified our identity cards. Both were plastic. Which was good because I had to wipe mine with a thumb so the barcode reader could scan.

We parked by the locker room.

I'd already been washed down by the fire engine, but I still had blood all over me. Streaks of blood were on the vinyl passenger seat.

The park ranger - a LAPD officer on light duty - waved a hand at me when I started to offer to clean it up.

Far from the light banter earlier, she wanted me the fuck out of her truck and the fuck out of her life. Nothing personal. She even kind of liked me. But I was a shit magnet and she had plenty of shit already.

My boots squished as I walked to the locker room entry.

A police officer charged her rifle, not bothering with the clearing barrel, as she walked away from the armorer's cage.

Unisex locker room, not that anyone cared anymore. I turned in my machine pistol.

"Hey, fuck, I'm not taking this!" someone shouted from the cage as I walked away. "Get back here!" the voice faded.

Another set of hard eyes as I dropped magazine and showed chamber on the pistol. "100% Chamber Check, Deadly Force Required" was the sign above the desk, the empty chair, and the cop standing behind same with hand on slung submachine gun, not quite pointed.

Then I entered the locker room, walked right past my locker, and right into the shower on the far right, the one with the red and white label that looked like a spiky tentacle monster. Biohazard.

I had a lot of blood to wash off. And it would simplify my laundry as well, if I soaked in cold water as I took everything off.

I was naked when the three of them approached.

"Hey, Army," one said.

"Yo," I acknowledged as I scrubbed with the strong smelling liquid soap.

"Good shit out there."

They walked away. They'd been asked to deliver a message.

I hadn't been delivering a message.

I closed my eyes briefly.

###

"Hold hard, here!" I ordered. I moved to the next one. "Immediate," I barked, "Difficulty breathing. Red tarp. Move!" "Deceased. I said deceased! Next one!"

Then my eyes and hands had found something that didn't match.

I shoved the machine pistol under the moaning woman's chin and pulled the trigger twice.

"EOD! Bomb tech! Meet us over there! Now!"

I let the hot machine pistol drop in its sling as I picked up two handles of the four handled fabric stretcher.

We had to get this corpse away from the injured, right the fuck now.

And the wires I'd seen protruding from under her blouse, to the vest.

###

I'd had a spare change of clothes in my locker.

Now I had to borrow a piece of desk, for my report.

My E-mail chimed as I set it up.

"Report to Carson Base for permanent change of station within 24 hours. NLT 1400 hours tomorrow."

I still had a report to write.

###

"Mother of God," said the woman who'd objected to the placement.

"Yeah. He'll do," said the chair of the Board with satisfaction.

"He'll do what," she muttered as she turned to the next file.